Saturday, November 8, was SMCLA’s first members-only workshop and it was a learning success! Adam Silver of KitchenSinkWP shared ins and outs of setting up and using WordPress sites and provided important takeaways for scheduling, beefing up site security, and a peek at the latest in two-factor authentication trends — We all agree that Clef looks like a very cool method!

Attendees learned about the origins of WordPress, which was started in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg, and that the latest release, 4.0, boasts a simple visual process to embed media tweets and videos directly into a blog post. Did you know that widgets are visual representations of plugins, but that not all plugins use widgets? That was just one learning among many others for WP site management. Others included the pros and cons of using self-managed (.org) vs. fully-managed (.com) sites, what the deal is with 2600 themes and 30,000 plugins, and the basics of managing site security.

Gregg Franklin of ServerPress was on hand to explain the benefits of local site development and the risks of cowboy coding, or editing your site directly via the live site environment.

Finally attendees walked away with some solid reasons to use WP – it’s free, secure, accessible, and Google search has an affinity for content published on this platform. They now appreciate knowing why to use a theme gallery to find their next theme rather than download unfamiliar one found floating around via a web search. Our members are not about that malware life!

Have a Social Media topic you’d like to learn more about in a workshop? Let us know! This is the final week of 2015 SMCLA board member nominations. Be sure to nominate yourself or someone you think would make an awesome addition and submit your form BEFORE 6pm on November 14!